Silent Animation

The International Society of Typographic Designers Student brief 2021.

Brief
You are asked to design a typographic work that celebrates the world of Silent Cinema. Your submission may be a broad spectrum work that presents a series of chapters with different stories that you are interested in communicating, or you may wish to focus on a certain aspect of the medium – the directors; the design and technology or a particular movement or artist. You may be more interested to focus on the cultural and/or political impact of the medium. It is up to you to determine the story you want to tell. You should however evidence a broad spectrum of inquiry in your (sketchbook) research. Look at everything from the earliest experiments with the moving image such as Magic Lanterns and the Zoetrope to inventors and innovators like Edison, the Lumière Brothers, Georges Méliès and Max Reinhardt. You might consider where early films were shown, from fairground tents to Nickleodeons and film palaces like Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.